Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — The roughly 9,000 civilian Defense employees at the Defense Supply Center Columbus
in Whitehall received a temporary reprieve yesterday when the Defense Department announced that it
would delay plans to send out furlough notices.

Instead of today, the department will send notices on or around April 5. It plans to analyze
whether a spending bill that passed Congress yesterday could minimize the 22 days of furloughs that
employees have been told they will receive.

“Because of the continuing resolution, we’re going to take the time to analyze what does this
mean to the department,” said Navy Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Defense spokeswoman. “After we’ve had
the chance to analyze it, then we will decide what steps we need to take. ...

“This does not eradicate the furlough,” she said.

Defense employees face furloughs as a result of a 2011 agreement between President Barack Obama
and Congress that resulted in $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts to discretionary
spending. The cuts, which began March 1, amount to around $85 billion for the remainder of this
fiscal year.

The department notified U.S. Senate offices yesterday about its decision just hours after the
House passed a final version of the spending bill, which will keep the government operating for the
next six months.

Hull-Ryde said that the Pentagon now estimates that furlough notices will go out on or about
April 5. She said the Pentagon still anticipates that civilian employees will face 22 furlough
days, but that could change, depending on the effect of the bill.

By law, the Defense Department has to notify people 30 days before the first furlough day,
Hull-Ryde said. That means if the department does send out furlough notices around April 5,
civilian employees won’t actually have to take a furlough day until May 5.

Pentagon press secretary George Little called the delay “a responsible step to take in order to
assure our civilian employees that we do not take lightly the prospect of furloughs and the
resulting decrease in employee pay.” The furlough as planned would cost civilian Defense employees
about 20 percent of their pay from when it starts to the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Nothing in the continuing resolution specifically delayed furloughs, but the bill was aimed at
providing the Pentagon more flexibility in its cuts. The spending bill has yet to be signed into
law.

Whitehall Mayor Kim Maggard has said that the furloughs could mean her community loses $1.5
million in income taxes. She said in all — counting the effect on local businesses that support the
base — the furloughs could result in a 10 percent cut to the city’s general-revenue fund.

Patty Viers, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1148, one of the
unions at the base, said she was “cautiously optimistic” about the delay.

She said she is hopeful that the Pentagon will determine it can reduce the furloughs.